The Bottineau pioneer. (Bottineau, N.D.) 1885-1895, 1887-01-27
srHlMs OF ABUSED WOMEN.
To-day They Haye Their Husbands
Arrested and To- Morrow They
H Seek Their Release.

5.ssssS5 Arrested and Tomorrow They
Seek Their Release.
The casual visitor to any of the city
police courts never fails to be Impress
cd with the very large number of wom-
ga who form a part Of the audience.
The presence in a police court of any
ono not compelled by business or law
70 be there is strange enough anyway
since it is very seldom that a word of
the proceedings before the justice is au-
dible q foot beyond the railing which
separates the public from the court.
The seyenty-ive or one hundred men
who gather in the courts every day
may be attracted by vulgar curiosity,
the shelter and the comfortable seats,
Or by interest in the fate of some pris-
oner. No such motives draw the wom-
en- thither. They are there because
they want warrants. As soon as the
regular business of the session is
through with the court officer bawls:
AL those wishing warrants this way"
and two long lines of women, some
with bandaged heads and blackened
eyes and other evidences of domestic
amusements, file one by one before his
honor and relate their griefs. Most Of
them want their husbands arrested for
beating Or failing to support them,
though occasionally one appears who
has some other kind of a wrong to re-
~ port.
.Ninety-five out eof every hundred
woIaen who apply for warrants want
their husbands arrested said a clerk
OF one ct the downtown courts, 'and
nine out of every ten either Withdraw
the charge or pay the fine after they
gain their desire and their lords are
arrested. Every week-almost every
day-we have some woma here who
has been beaten half to death by her
husband and then forgives him and
wants to get him off before he can be
punished. The other day we had such
a case, where the woman had been all
but killed by her hrute of a husband,
who, it was proved, was aterror to the
neighborhood. The wife and a half
dozen of the neighbors testified against
him, and he was fined $40. In the
afternoon his wife stepped up and paid
the fine rather than see him go to the
island. She.hadn't.a cent in the world,
but had gone around and borrowed
from the other women who lived in the
neighborhood until she had made up
u the sum. That very night her hus-
band got drunk again and blackened
her other eye for her. There's no tell
ing what length a woman's devotion to
a man will take her.
as#G aSVn,, ,,ouor ootoh M old oo1;oo~on
arresting a imam on his wife's COM
plant unless,he hastt said the gray
haired court officer, whose six stripes
oh his sleeve testified that he knew
what he was talking about. nor mix
ing up in any family quarrel either.
They know too we'll that they are a
COOP deal more likely to get themselves
into a snap than do anybody any good.
I mind a time that I got a broken
head over on the east side for doing
that. / was young and fresh then. /
was passing along the street when
heard irregular tenement row going on
in the top story of the house. I rushed
up the stairs and, there was a big,
4 drunken 'truckman with one hand in
y his wife, s back hair, lamming her with
a cart-rung. l jumped On the man
and knocked him down, but the wom-
an was up in a minute and sent me
spinning with a fatiron. Then both
jumped on me, and before help came
they nearly pounded the life out of me.
Welgot them both tothe station, but the
woman refused to testify against her
husband, and both got, thirty days for
resisting an officer" Sometimes it
] works the other way" put in the clerk.
We had a case here, one day this week
of a husband who got a warrant for
his wife's arrest for habitual drunken
ness. She was sent up for thirty days,
chiefly on his testimony. The next
day he came in, crying like a baby, and
wanted his wife released, for he said
he couldn't live without her. But it
u was too late. She had been received
" on the island."-NeW York Mail and
Eypress. "
Winter Flowing.